Man who shot pregnant wife won't get new trial

A N.C. Court of Appeals decision released Tuesday denies an Alamance County man’s request for another trial following his 2010 conviction on charges including first-degree murder.

A jury found Robert Thompson Broom guilty after he shot his then-pregnant wife, Danna Broom, in 2008. Though the couple’s daughter, Lillian Grace Broom, was not struck by the bullet, she died as the result of problems caused by premature birth. Specialists from Duke University Medical Center testified the shooting caused the need for Lillian’s premature birth through a Caesarean section.

Danna Fitzgerald (she now uses her maiden name) said her core feeling on learning of the decision Tuesday was “ultimately … relief, because he won’t get out. … Any of this kind of stuff is bittersweet because I lost my daughter, but we get a little justice with every step we’ve gone through during the last four years.”

Fitzgerald attended oral arguments in the appeal in October and praised the efforts of the state Attorney General’s office.

The case was the first in North Carolina in which a person was tried for murdering a child who was born, lived and later died following an attack on the mother before the child’s birth.

In addition to the first-degree murder conviction, Broom was found guilty of shooting, kidnapping and attempting to kill his wife.

Broom was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the first-degree murder conviction and 157 to 198 months for the attempted first-degree murder conviction in connection with shooting his wife.

Both Robert and Fitzgerald at first told investigators the shooting was accidental.

Broom’s attorneys said he should get a new trial because the defense motion to dismiss the first-degree murder charge should have been granted for multiple reasons:

â–ª Lillian had not been born when her mother was shot and so Â“cannot be the subject of a first-degree murder charge.Â”

â–ª Her death was not caused by the gunshot wound to Danna Broom.

â–ª The prosecution failed to show Â“substantial evidence of premeditation and deliberation.Â”

Appeals Court judges said the defense relied on a case in which the child who died was unborn. In contrast, Lillian was born and lived for a month afterward.

Despite not being struck by the bullet, the judges ruled, the relationship between Lillian’s ultimately fatal health problems and the emergency caesarean section through which she was born make Robert Broom’s claim invalid on that point.

The Appeals Court ruling relies on trial testimony that Robert Broom was “uninterested in having a second child and asked Danna to get an abortion.” Testimony was that Broom was having a long-term affair.

The appeal says Broom’s defense was not allowed to sufficiently question jurors about issues such as abortion and when life begins.

Fitzgerald said only support from family and friends have gotten her through the ordeal.

Particularly troubling, she said, were arguments as to whether Lillian was a human life.

“To try to say that this little girl was not a human being – I look at a picture of her every day and she’s a baby girl, and human being.”